The Great Craighead Cave

Saltpeter, or niter, a key ingredient of gunpowder, was found in many limestone caves in East Tennessee, including the Great Craighead Cave beneath the “Milk Sick Knobs,” where white snakeroot thrived. In June 1861, Randolph Ross, Jr., and J. Marshall McCue contracted with the Confederate Ordnance Bureau to produce niter there, and as the Confederate war effort demanded immense quantities, the government advanced $2,000 to expand the facility’s capacity. By the following January, McCue, then operating alone, had contracted to deliver 250,000 pounds of saltpeter to Confederate powder works in Augusta, Georgia, during 1862, though production never approached that figure and the site instead shipped several hundred pounds every two weeks. Abraham Stakely directed the operations and conscripted men including Charles W. Hicks to mine the mineral and heat it in large iron kettles. Nearly 60 years later, Hicks recalled that he and ten others camped and worked there faithfully for two and a half years until Federal soldiers came to Sweetwater, four miles away, in Sept. 1863, when they dismantled the works and scattered home to avoid capture.

Tennessee · United States